Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Our Pennsylvania correspondent alerted us that the International Movie Database site on Roland Emmerich's upcoming film on the Shakespeare authorship controversy, Anonymous , recently updated information about the film including the fact that Oxfordians Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance have been added to the cast. Jacobi is slated to enact a prologue, and Rylance will play Gloucester. Other additions include Australian Twilight veteran Xavier Samuel  who will play Southampton. Relative unknown Antje Thiele will play Lady de Vere, although the site doesn't specify whether Thiele plays Anne Cecil or Elizabeth Trentham. Newcomer Sebastian Reid will play Essex. Tony Way and Robert Emms will play Elizabethan scribblers Thomas Nashe and Thomas Dekker. These actors join the Anonymous cast headed by Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson as Elizabeth (old and young), Rhys Ifans as Shakespeare/Edward de Vere, David Thewlis as Cecil (pere) and Edward Hogg as Cecil (f...

Shakespeare Oxford Society journal editor Michael Egan was quoted in a CNN online review of James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? : "The case for Oxford derives from the fact that almost everything we know about Shakespeare of Stratford  doesn't seem connectible to the author of the plays," he (Egan) says. "It's that gap between what we could infer about the author, and what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford , which has raised the questions." Egan said he was sorry that the author, CNN entertainment producer Todd Leopold didn't use Egan's main objection, that ". . . Contested Will  is a profoundly dishnonest book in the sense that Shapiro's book 1599 directly reads Shakespeare's life from his works." Leopold's article published today on CNN Entertainment,   "Was Shakespeare's Ghostwriter Shakespeare? ", numbers the Shakespeare authorship controversy among conspiracy theories such as r...

Todd Leopold, entertainment producer for CNN.com/SHOWBIZ, interviewed Shakespeare Oxford Society journal editor Michael Egan yesterday for an upcoming article on the Shakespeare authorship controversy. The article is being produced for CNN online, according to Leopold. We will post the URL when it is available.

From Tom Townsend, Oberon Treasurer --  Here are the details for all those interested in viewing the PBS production of Hamlet. Date: April 28 Time: 8.00pm Network: PBS Program: “Great Performances – Hamlet from the Royal Shakespeare Company" Starring:  Patrick Stewart as Claudius

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said.  “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.”  She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...

The deadline for applications to participate in this year's statewide Michigan Shakespeare Festival High School Monologue Contest is May 10, 2010. All high school students enrolled in grades 9-12 in the spring of 2010 are eligible to participate by performing one Shakespeare monologue of no more than two minutes in length. Finalists will compete for $350 in prizes on July 31, 2010 at Jackson Community College. Registration is $5. For more information, call Michigan Shakespeare Festival at 517-998-3673 or check the Michigan Shakespeare Festival website . The Washtenaw region semi-finals will be held at 10:45 a.m. May 15 at sponsor Whole Foods Market, 3135 Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor. Students will compete for $200 first and second prizes and tickets to the Michigan Shakespeare Festival to be held July 15-August 8, 2010. Click here for a copy of the application for the Washtenaw County Region Jackson region semi-finals will be held at 10:45 a.m. May 15 in the Shakespeare ...

Dear Oberon, We will be back together this Wednesday evening April 21 celebrating Shakspere’s UN-birthday. You will be hearing birthday greetings from Stratford, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, traditional professors and teachers, Stanley Wells and no doubt James Shapiro who undoubtedly will be given another round of interviews and book reviews to celebrate the event. Of course, not even Shakspere’s birthday is known for sure. It’s a surmise like the rest of his life, counting backward three days from the date of his Baptismal day, one of the few facts about the man known for reasonably sure.  In any event, we will be celebrating with cake and with Robert Duha, managing director of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, and other guests and regulars.  We will be discussing with Robert ways that Oberon can help the Festival. As you know, Robert has asked us to give presentations relating what we do to the plays featured at the Festival this year:   Co...

As the only Oberoner to attend, I will take this opportunity to report on what happened during the four days of the 14 th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Conference, held at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon Day 1 —Thursday, April 8, 2010 The Conference convened at 4:00 PM. First up was Mark Goggin on "The Case for Bacon as the Author of Julius Caesar ". Mr. Goggin focused on the underlying symbolism and allusions of the play and how it is all about using rhetoric for persuasion. Of course Bacon was a master of rhetoric. Bacon also wrote the most of any writer at the time about the psychology of decision making, another important theme in this play. Mr. Goggin went through the usual "qualifications" that the writer Shakespeare must have had, such as knowledge of law, medicine, music, military matters, and the new astronomy as well as possessing a large vocabulary. Bacon fits the bill quite well. (Of course so does Edward deVere and, in my own opinion, ...

I have just returned from Portland, Oregon where I attended the 14th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University. It was a wonderful experience and I will be posting some excerpts on this blog in the near future. For now, I would like to report on something which made me proud. Above you can see the lobby of the new SARC (Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre) at Concordia University (image courtesy of Dr. Daniel Wright, Director of the SARC). The SARC was formally dedicated during the Conference. In the picture you can see the classroom (just to the left of what is probably a portrait of Edward deVere). You can even see the "light of wisdom" present within the room. (Well, actually, it's just the sunlight. This picture was taken on one of the comparatively rare sunny days in Portland). On all the walls of this room (and other rooms in the SARC) there are posted many items related to the Authorship Question. I am very happy to say that there ...

I just want to be sure that we are appreciating the Wall Street Journal interview of James Shapiro for what it accomplished. First of all, the reporter states immediately, "today the controversy seems more alive than ever." That's a third party making a statement which the Strats have denied, and it is a direct result of her freshly done interview with one of the head Strats. No better third party than the Wall Street Journal . She does this, by the way, by framing Shapiro against Emmerich, so here is an early return on the Emmerich "investment" that perhaps we did not foresee. Second, Professor Shapiro states, "There are certain things you can't say or do [in academia], and one of them is to talk about who wrote Shakespeare." We have said this countless times and countless times have been denied as whiners. Now here comes the head Strat himself attesting to this truth about the state of free and open inquiry in academia. Thank you, Profe...

For a bit of fun, head over to Shakespeare Geek (the link is on the right side, the first one under Interesting Blogs) and click on the title. Look for the first post for today (April 1), titled "Actual Shakespeare Letters Found?!" and read it. Be sure to click on the link provided at the end of the blog entry to see what is really going on. Just remember what day this is. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but after you finish you will agree with me when I say that people in the past have gone to a lot of trouble to supply ANYTHING that could link William of Stratford to the author of the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Yes, Stratfordians would give their eye teeth (what does that expression mean anyway?) to be able to have even a millionth of what we Oxfordians have to link our candidate. The only recourse Stratfordians (like James Shapiro) have is to deny that the plays and sonnets can be autobiographical in any way or that they can tell us anything about what th...